For me the 1st June is the start of planting all the tender crops outside, because the end of May is our last frost date. Today the weather was anything but Summery. I certainly hope this isn’t the weather we’re expecting for the entire Summer, otherwise I will be very pissed off!! Let’s hope this is just a very tiny blip in the weather and tomorrow the sun will shine and we’ll have the heat that I so desperately want. The kids are in the middle of the May/June half term, and Emily has been studying hard for her GCSE’s, and George has been…..well doing stuff. Being the middle of the holiday I decided that we were going to go out for the day. Now usually we manage to go to the beach in this school holiday, but clearly it’s not the weather for it at the moment. So instead we went to Standen House and Gardens.

Outside Standen House before we went and had a look around.

We’ve been before, and I think it rained that time as well, but then that was in February I think, so I’m not surprised. We all had our wellies and waterproofs on, and goodness did we need them. We firstly walked around the house, which is beautiful. We played the game of “Which bedroom would we like?” Loads of wonderful knowledgable people in every room, very pleased to give you any information you required. Nothing was too much for them. We wandered through the gorgeous bedroom, and dressing rooms, and other room they had wonderfully lid out. It’s difficult to pick a favourite, but I think the bathroom was my favourite, not because of the decor, or the history behind the bath suite, but the fact that even then they used to play with toys in the bath!

Rubber duckies were used even before Bert and Ernie had one in their bath!

Once we’d finished looking round the house, our tummies started to grumble, so we found a sheltered spot that we used last time to sit and eat our lunch. By this time the rain had really started to pour, but being robust people as we are, we weren’t going to let a bit of water spoil our day. We sat down in the dry (although it was rather chilly) and ate our lunch. Most of the time we wear our wellies, it’s the sensible thing to do, especially when the weather has been rather moist lately. We did see a man wearing shorts, I bet he was cold! Well if he wasn’t he should have been.

A place to shelter and have a spot of lunch!

The rain eased off and we continued to have a look around. We wandered through the vegetable patch and I noticed a typo of one of their plant labels. They had written “BEETROOT Bolthardy”. There’s no “H” in “Boltardy”. We wandered on to the Croquette Lawn and had a little game. They’re not the easiest of balls to hit with those long mallets. It was fun though.  The area round the Quarry was closed off, due to the fact that it would have been too slippery on the steps down, and I don’t think anyone would have wanted to have fallen into the stagnant green water below.

The Quarry below, which you could only view from above.

After we’d had a bit more of a look round, we went to the cafe, and the kids had an ice cream (whatever the weather they always have an ice cream) and I had a decaf coffee. No caffeine for me, as it makes me go like a Meerkat in 10 minutes, and lasts for the next couple of hours. Then I get a migraine. Not good when you have to then drive home on the motorway. We then had a look round the shop and bought some treats, and a special pressie for Mark as he wasn’t able to come and is working in an office all day. I won’t tell you what I got him, as he’ll read this and then he’ll know. The it was time to drive home. As we were driving up the slip lane to get on the motorway they were playing the opening music to Star Wars on Classic FM. It was the bit when the Star Destroyer appears (1.55 approximately) at the top of the screen and the kids and I started making firing noises as we drove towards the M25. Perfect timing. Emily was in stitches in the back seat. So although it was wet, cold, and didn’t feel like Summer at all today, it was great fun.